[HN Gopher] Post-postal: What did we lose when we stopped writin...
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Post-postal: What did we lose when we stopped writing letters?
Author : benbreen
Score : 20 points
Date : 2024-10-23 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com)
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Something else that's lost when we stopped writing letters:
| attention span. When someone is reading a letter it is almost
| always the only thing they are doing.
| nnf wrote:
| If we're talking about handwritten letters or even typewritten,
| one would have to have a plan for what they wanted to say and
| then execute their writing linearly from beginning to end,
| whereas now we can edit and poke and prod and reword with
| almost no effort.
| willcipriano wrote:
| If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| "ChatGPT, please summarize this tirade I wrote in less than
| 500 words"
| politelemon wrote:
| Even emails, the modern letter, now feel like they're becoming a
| relic. My younger peers avoid it as much as possible, and instead
| prefer chat tools. I wonder what would be most to future
| historians examining us, that current historians have the
| advantage of.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It's interesting, because I just finished viewing _her_ ,
| starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely fellow who makes his living
| writing letters. Theodore Twombly writes letters on the behalf of
| clients. He writes heartfelt love letters, letters from daughter
| to father, letters to bridge the distance for friends.
|
| And of course, the premise of the film is that he installs an AI
| OS and falls in love with the disembodied Assistant voice,
| Samantha. And [spoiler alert], Samantha's parting gift to
| Theodore is that she arranges to have his letters published as a
| _bona fide_ book by a real book publisher, because this is the
| best way she found to honor him and his work. It 's really
| touching that this ephemeral AI without a body should reach into
| the physical world that Theodore inhabits in this way.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| I am from the era of the beginning of emails. I wrote a couple of
| letters, but most of it was emails.
|
| So I'm more impacted by the next thing. Going from email to chat.
| And I think it is absolutely horrible. Before, it used to be that
| one thoughtfully wrote down and email and sent it out. Now I am
| part of 2432 Slack channels in which each message can become its
| own thread and I (I wanted to capitalize it to emphasize that it
| is me, but it already is) am responsible for filtering out what
| is important to me.
|
| When I dealt with emails I would get emails that weren't meant
| for me, but it was a whole different level of volume.
| ddulaney wrote:
| I find that for me, it's the opposite. It's very fast to scan a
| Slack channel and only dig into interesting threads. But I get
| CC'd on endless emails that aren't meant for me, to the tune of
| dozens per day. And I don't have any way to unsubscribe -- I
| can mute a thread or a whole channel in Slack, but there's no
| equivalent once I'm CC'd.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| Email filters me son.
| ddulaney wrote:
| OK maybe I don't know how to do this right. I do that for
| automated systems, but do you filter entire conversations?
| Like, I'm on some random email thread, and dozens of people
| are replying. Making a rule feels pretty heavyweight and
| isn't quick (at least in Outlook).
| Symbiote wrote:
| Thunderbird can do this, although I haven't used it myself.
|
| (And I realize not many people use Thunderbird for work.)
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ignore-threads
| vleaflet wrote:
| And there is always at least one person in email chain who
| puts their signature with company logo, custom fonts and
| colors to every single reply, making it annoying to try
| follow the conversation because my email client can't even
| parse the mess anymore.
| colechristensen wrote:
| At the beginning of my career, I wrote emails. Nobody read
| them. I stopped.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > for filtering out what is important to me.
|
| I see it going the way of the email: we have these optimistic
| "inbox 0" kind of veleity, but after a week most people
| understand their life will be eaten by email at that pace and
| just accept an overflowing inbox where they'll willfully ignore
| 99.9%, including legit communication if it doesn't hit the
| appropriate filter.
|
| Ignoring 99.9% of what's happening in all the dozens of Slack
| channels is probably the way: if there was anything important
| it's up to the sender to make it clear and reach it's audience.
| That might not be the ideal way, but the reverse just won't
| work anyway.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| I think hand writing is still very important, but for entirely
| personal (and maybe selfish) reasons. One of the biggest
| motivators for me to learn new language scripts has been the joy
| in producing letters in a foreign script using my own hand.
| Handwriting has a deep link within the mind to a number of
| important language areas, and is probably wired through
| completely different pathways than keyboard typing. Not to say
| one is better than the other, ultimately it's all about
| communication. But just like some people prefer to draw by hand,
| I still prefer taking notes and writing my thoughts down by hand
| first.
| dougb5 wrote:
| Arcade Fire did a good job capturing this wistfulness in "We Used
| to Wait" from 2010. Recommended:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs11Bp1RkpU
| scherlock wrote:
| FWIW, many sleep away camps still rely on letter writing. My
| daughter left with a stack of pre-stamped envelopes and a pad of
| paper. She enjoyed writing and receiving letters.
| xnyan wrote:
| I was raised mormon and did my mormon mission 2007-2009 in
| Ukraine. We were not allowed to call anyone outside our family on
| christmas and mothers day, and we were limited to 1 hour a week
| for email, family only. We were allowed to write handwritten
| letters to anyone, so that's how I maintained my relationship to
| my then friend now spouse, about 2-3 times a month as our sole
| form of communication.
|
| There are some very nice things about writing letters, but
| ultimately it makes communication more difficult compared to more
| modern options, and my experience letter writing left me much
| more appreciative of the alternatives we enjoy today.
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